I’m a Protestant and my hubby is a Catholic. If I don’t go with him to his church he doesn’t go. He refuses to come to my church. So now we don’t go to church. I’m confused about what to do.
I’m afraid that you are experiencing what many couples experience when they marry people who are not saved or are of a different thinking or religion. The Apostle Peter addresses his second epistle like this in 2 Peter 1:1, “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” This ‘like precious faith’ is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour and Lord. This faith is shared by all true believers on the Lord Jesus. As Peter writes, this faith comes through the “righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” There is a unity among believers that should be shared between marriage partners.
In writing about marriage, the Apostle Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 7:39 that our marriage is to be, “only in the Lord.” This means that we should only marry the one the Lord leads us to marry and the married couple should be able to share the Lord between themselves. I know, at this point, that this teaching does not help you. You are married to a Catholic and are experiencing what can happen to two people who are of different faiths.
You mentioned that he won’t go with you to your church and you don’t go with him to the Catholic church. Then you said, “So now we don’t go to church.” As a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ, you need the fellowship and encouragement of fellow believers. If your husband does not prohibit you from going, you should still attend, even if you have to go alone. We read in Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” It is so important to be gathered together often with other Christians.
I encourage you to constantly pray for your husband’s salvation and maintain a Godly character in front of him. We find these encouraging words in 1 Peter 3:1-2, “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.” The word ‘conversation’ really means ‘behavior’. The word ‘fear’ means ‘reverence.’ You should live such a life that your husband would take notice of your lifestyle and be ‘won’ for Christ. I have prayed for you and your husband. May the Lord bless your efforts to be a Godly wife to him so that you might have the proper influence in his life to bring him to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (167.1)